[2010] the Politics of Belonging and Settler Cultural Identity

KAN 0 MIL ENNIUM 1 , 000 YEARS IN HISTORY Kano in the Second Millennium Selected Papers Presented at the Seminar on Kano in the Second Millennium Kano, May 10-14, 1999 978-8092-58-6 Research and Documentations Directors Government House, Kano, Nigeria ©2010 11 Chapter Six The Role of the Sarauta Institution in Shaping the Spatial Growth and Community Integration in Kano City ...................................................... 97 Muhammad Jamilu Abba Chapter Seven The Sarauta System in Kano 999 to Mid-18th Century: The Emergence of the State, the Development of Statehood and the Maturation of Statecraft ................................................................................................. 130 Nuruddeen Abubakar Part Ill The Sociological Perspectives Chapter Eight Confluences and Influences: Kano as an Emergent City-State ............... 164 Kantoma Muhammadu Uba Adamu . Chapter Nine The Politics of Belonging and Settler Cultural Identity: The Emergence of Kano as a Multicultural Society .. .................................................. 196 Abdalla Uba Adamu Chapter Ten Gida: The Socio- Cultural Ethos of the Kano Urban House ........ :... ... 240 AbdulRazzaq Ahmad Muhammad-Ournar Chapter Eleven Colonialism and .the Growth of the Sabon Gari System in the Early 20th Century Kano ....... ... ........................................................................ 260 Ahmed Bako & M.T. Usman lV CHAPTER NINE The Politic·s of Belonging and Settler Cultural Identity: The Emergence of Kano as a 'Multicultural Society Abdalla Uba Adamu Department of Education Bayero University, Kano itize.nship can be thought of as a key marker of contemporary life. It denotes a boundary making Cdecision system about what is considered legitimate and the norm within a particular community. This suggests that citiienship is the accumulation of such decisions over a long-~. .l!ation. What feeds these decisions? The most precise answer would have to be the cultural practices that are judged and regarded to be important to the social, political and legal fabric of society. Citizenship, in an ongoing contest with subjectivity and identity, maintains its validity by being the measure upon which "true" belonging and participation are conceived. Citizenship and identity are therefore bound together. The conceptualization of contemporary citizenship, its definitions and its implications is not an easy task. For one thing, conceptions of citizenship need to "avoid the homogenizing assumptions implicit in unitary and exclusive conceptions of identity" (Kaplan, 1997: 68). Thus, as further The Politics of Belonging and Settler Cultural Identity:•.• Abdalla Uba Adamu argued by Requejo (1999), the concept of citizenship has been interpreted in different ways throughout history. For instance, since the time of classical Greece it has always been taken to refer to an individual member of a political community, and considered to be one of the basic references of individual and collective identity of this community. In modern democracies, citizenship involves direct or indirect participation in the exercise of sovereignty. But beyond this strict definition, the notion of citizenship has come to incorporate rights of a diverse nature. According to the classical distinction proposed by Marshall, these may be defined as civil, social and political (Marshall, 1950). As it gains momentum in recent times, the notion of citizenship has undergone multiple redefinitions that blur these traditional distinctions, rearticulate the civil and the political, and reshuffle the debate between citizenship and identity. As Don Handelman (1994: 443) argued when considering the issue of nationality in Israel, In a democratic state, citizenship rests on the premise that each individual eligible for citizenship is the moral and political equal of every other. Each citizen exists as a unit of meaning paralleling that of every other citizen see Segal 1988). Citizenship is a property of the individual, and the unity of the democratic state arises out of the equal relationship that each citizen acknowledges to every other person similar!)" defined. Emphasis in such a social order is placed on the claim of basic similarities among its members, and each is accorded both rights and obligations. But, as Dumont 1986) points out, there is no requirement that citizens of the democratic state share in ariy essential socio-cultural sameness of being. In this regard, the sensibilities of personhood and identity of each citizen in principle may be distinct from those of any other. 197 KANO IN THE SECOND MILLENNIUM Part Ill: The Sociological Perspectives Sanchez-Mazas, M. and Klein, 0. (2003) ask why study citizenship from a social-psychological perspective? One reason is certainly that social psychologists can enlighten the understanding of this "essentially contested concept" Gallie, quo~ed by Lister, (1997) with their theoretical and empirical knowledge on social identification processes. Another reason is that in studying citizenship issues, much can be gained for the study of social identity itself. This concept, which refers to "that part of an individual's self-concept which derives from his knowledge of his membership in a social group or groups together with the value and emotional significance attached to that membership" Tajfel, (1981: 255) is at the core of one of the dominant contemporary theories on intergroup relations. New dimensions of citizenship brought to the fore by the current political transformations, especially the emergence of a supranational frame of identification in Europe, and in smaller scale in African countries coping with migratory patterns) and of multiple identities in the public sphere, call for a study of social identity in connection with the notion of citizenship. Emerging after the industrial revolution and still dominant, the traditional national model of citizenship is based on a construction of the State as representing a single ethnic group or "nation" (Breuilly, 1982; Gellner, 1994; Hobsbawm, 1990). The form of identification presumed in this model was "ethnic" in its form i.e., it presupposed the construction of a nation sharing a common culture, history, language, religion, ancestors and/or any combination thereof. This view of identification requires a subjective homogenization of the national citizenry, often realized through an essentialization of the nation. In psychological terms, loyalty and support for the State was thought to derive 198 The Politics of Belonging and Settler Cultural Identity:... Abdalla Uba Adamu from identification with the group it is supposed to represent (Hobsbawm, 1983). The question of what drives people to support, or to contest, existing authorities and institutions has attracted social psychological interest for decades. Yet, one may argue that recent conceptualizations of such loyalty have been largely based on an "ethnic" view of citizenship. Individuals are thought to support a group to the extent that they self define as members of this group, which, in turn, demands that they view it as a cohesive entity (see e.g. Castano 1998; Ellemers, Kortekaas, & Ouwerkerk, 1999; Hogg 1987; Hogg & Hardie 1991 ). While Licata et al. (2003) question the view that similarity is the key to ide11tification, which determines loyalty, Depuiset and Butera (2003) address the issue of loyalty through the distinction, offered by Schatz and Staub (1997) between "constructive" and "blind" patriotism. The latter reflects the classic form of loyalty, characteristic of "classic" nationalism and based on an unmitigated support to the in-group whereas the former incorporates a critical dimension which has gained prior importance in the civil society described by Habermas (1992), and characterized by permanent debate and the absence of consensus. While Schatz and Staub viewed these two aspects as fixed personality traits, Depuiset et al. show that constructive patriotism can vary as a function of the perceived legitimacy of the actions of the authorities. In presenting this perspective, they "de essentialize" patriotism, and show that it should be considered not only in terms of self-definition and emotional attachment to an in-group, but as embedded in specific political relations with authorities. 199 KANO IN THE SECOND MILLENNIUM Part Ill: The Sociological Perspectives The social identity tradition (Tajfel & Turner, 1986; . Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987) has very muc.h relied on a phenomenological definition of identity, focusing · on the cognitions, evaluations and emotions associated with group J:'\lembership (Tajfel, 1981; see also Turner, 1982). In this view, group behavior is often considered as only a consequence of this self-definition rather than as actually constructing it. Yet, identities are not only defined cognitively, they are embedded and constructed in action. Even when groups draw upon historical and religious references, they actively construct their identities around a plurality of political projects not only aiming at recognition of particularisms but also at political involvement in the broader society. These interpretations are precisely the focus of the arguments by Hopkins, Reicher and Kahani-Hopkins (2003) where they analyze how members of a minority group, the Muslim Community in Britain, use religious narratives to justif:r&-pecific political projects in the context of British society. They highlight a crucial message: Identities are not self-evident consequences of particular social

Load more